James Blake’s seventh album drops today with an unusually clear backstory. After years of working with the big labels, this is his first fully independent release, and it really does feel like the shift has energised him.
From the opening seconds of ‘Walk Out Music’, there’s a looseness to the production that suggests we’re listening to a musician revelling in the freedom to follow his instincts once more.
Musically, Trying Times pulls together the threads Blake has spent more than a decade refining. His post-dubstep electronic roots are still there in the bare-bones beats and synths, and the gospel-leaning vocals along with R&B melodies that define records like Assume Form are still present in helping shape the tone. At its best, this new attempt shows how naturally Blake can move between those two worlds.
That balance is captured particularly well on ‘Doesn’t Just Happen’ featuring Dave. It works mostly because Dave’s verse cuts through Blake’s inward-looking style with something more grounded. ‘Days Go By’ is then built around a flipped sample from Dizzee Rascal’s ‘I Luv U’ and is one of the record’s more memorable ideas, turning a familiar grime classic into something softer and more reflective. ‘Rest Of Your Life’ leans closest to a proper upbeat moment, but Blake never quite lets it become something you’ll hear on the dancefloor.
Across the album, Blake keeps returning to the same central idea: that love is something you work at rather than something that simply arrives. It’s a reasonable theme, but he does circle it too often – so often that the point starts to feel over-explained.
Several lyrical moments reach for big statements about connection and perseverance in today’s political climate but land in language that feels vague, sometimes even banal, which ends up weakening a lot of the album.
